THE REAL DEAL: When in Doubt, RE Business Owners Call D2D

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Whether it’s a natural disaster or a system upgrade, there’s always something threatening to take your RE business offline.

When Hurricane Helene hit, Dawn Dardzinski and her D2D Consulting team were up at 3 AM helping clients implement disaster recovery and business continuity plans. From making sure billing and end of quarter filings went out on time to answering phone calls from tenants, D2D served as an extension of its clients’ staff when those workers couldn’t get to their office. For her clients, it was a crucial lifeline in a disaster; for Dardzinski and D2D, it was just another day at work.

An Extension of Your Business

Dardzinski started D2D in 2017 as a “management consulting service” made up of veterans from around real estate, management, tech and accounting industries. Dardzinski herself is a veteran of the tech financial services and real estate worlds, having been part of the team that helped launch one of the earliest online banking tools for what is now JP Morgan Chase in the 90s and then moving into the real estate world having worked at Related Companies before starting her own shop.

“I have a love of marrying technology with functional, day to day needs to make your life easier and more efficient,” she says. “I want D2D to be an extension of our clients’ teams. I don’t want to be there just to be a billable mouth to feed. I want us to always be able to show value.”

While most clients come to D2D to help them implement and run property management and accounting software, that’s just the tip of the iceberg of services that D2D provides. Part consultant, part therapist, Dardzinski has a reputation among her clients for being able to take a bird’s eye view of their business problems and cut through the complexities with insightful solutions.

“She listened for about 45 minutes and then laid it all out on a chart and simplified it,” recalls Anthony Sutton, Director of Information Systems for Biltmore Farms, who brought D2D on when his team encountered major roadblocks stemming from a Yardi implementation gone wrong. “It was almost like a therapy session of past grievances.”

Helping Clients Grow

D2D’s real strengths emerge once a client has passed whatever crisis point prompted them to call Dardzinski in the first place. After bringing D2D on to help get his team’s Yardi implementation working, Sutton came to rely on Dardzinski’s guidance when planning future changes.

“She has character and integrity. If something’s going to be difficult, she will tell you,” he says. “We’re more comfortable in making decisions that may impact the system because I know that she will be able to help us solve any issues.”

Dardzinski’s people skills are a crucial part of her success. James Bernstein, President of The Green Companies, told us how, when he brought in D2D to help streamline his accounting department, he was worried that some of his employees might chafe at being told how to do their jobs by “scary consultants” reminiscent of the movie Office Space.

“They really just talked to my team and asked, ‘How much time a week do you spend processing payroll? How long do you spend with accounts payable processing?’” he recalls. “She kind of broke things down and asked, ‘What if I could eliminate 50% of the time that takes?’ So my people started to pay attention.”

The team embraced D2D because the consultants talked to them in an “easy, casual” way and ultimately made their jobs less complicated. D2D’s team knows how to speak with clients because they come from the world of real estate management and understand what it’s like to do the client’s jobs. 

“They have very in-depth knowledge about all the subsets of our business and how to make them work with technology,” says Bernstein.

After D2D helped streamline their accounting operations, Dardzinkski’s team implemented a series of real time data reporting systems that gave Bernstein the ability to make “more strategic” business decisions quickly.

“It sounds like little things,” he says, “but in reality, these are the things that help you be very on top of your business.”

The Eye of the Storm

While D2D helps clients shore up and grow their business, they also serve as an extension of their clients’ team when the worst happens. TRD spoke with Dardzinski as the storm surge from Hurricane Helene was receding, and she told us how D2D, along with its two internal division, Tri Edge Advisors and The Custom Call Center, were making sure that clients’ crucial accounting and phone answering services didn’t go offline just because their main offices were under water.

“Their employees are out, but it means that ours will now be their bench strength until they can get back into the office,” says Dardzinski. “It’s been pretty much a race since 3 AM so that they can continue to operate their businesses.”

While D2D’s tech team helps reset passwords, allowing workers to access crucial systems from home, Tri Edge is making sure that end-of-quarter reporting is filed and bills are paid, and The Custom Call Center is answering incoming calls from tenants who can’t reach the clients’ office.

It’s all part of the proactive business continuity plans that D2D implements with all of its clients. Coming from the world of financial services, Dardzinski has long known that disaster recovery and business continuity plans are crucial to the long term success of a business, and she makes sure that these plans are put into place with each of her RE clients.

“Business continuity and disaster recovery planning is not something that the real estate industry necessarily does, especially the small to moderate sized clients that we often work with” she explains. “As a third party consultancy, we do that for them.”